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If I am an insurance company, and I have data that says you are carrying a gene that is correlated with colon cancer…

You think an insurance company would leave money on the table if they thought your DNA could save them a few bucks? They’d either offer discounts to people for submitting DNA samples or require DNA samples as a condition of coverage.

If I am a med company, and I know what your genes correlate with known treatable genetic diseases …

Med companies don’t need your DNA to know that they can charge more life-saving medication. They just need you to know that you have a particular condition and then make sure you know about their medication. If the disease in question is fatal, like your example, it actually seems like a win for the person in question that there’s a cure for their condition.

If I am a texas politician, who is already threatening hospitals across the nation illegally for your private medical data, I am salivating trying to get your dna…

Ah yes, the Texas politician who is going to let the lack of DNA data stand in the way of his eugenic designs. Okay. Totally realistic.

This list shows 1500 people for me. I assume that’s just some arbitrary limit to the number of results. There’s significantly overlap in the relationship lists, so the total number of people with data available is less than the (14000 x 0.5 x 1500) than the math might indicate.

My list of possible relations goes from 25% to 0.28% shared DNA. That’s half-sibling down to 4th cousin (shared 3rd-great-grandparents).

The only thing I can see for people who I haven’t “connected” with is our shared ancestry and general location (city or state) if they share it. I can see “health reports” if the person has specifically opted to share it with me after “connecting”.

But why do you need access to any of your half sibling’s personal data to do that?

Nobody “needs” it, lol. People do it because it’s interesting to them. That’s why it’s opt-in.

Why do you need access to everyone who opted in’s data to do that?

Why does Facebook need to show you other people’s profiles and posts? Why does Lemmy show me your profile and posts? It’s how those services work, and people choose to use those services because they work that way.

Do you not see a responsibility to future generations in any of your actions or are you just here to “get yours” and check out?

Not on this matter. Simply asserting that danger exists is not the same as demonstrating it, and you’re doing a lot of asserting and zero demonstrating.

While there are real and immediate dangers today

Such as? You’re pretty light on details in a situation where it would really help your argument to provide examples. It makes me assume that you don’t actually know.

our responsibility in this moment is to be a firm NO so that these things don’t find their extremes in our lifetime or beyond

Why does that require a “firm NO”? Plenty of actually dangerous things have been handled via regulation rather than a “firm NO”.

You’re the frog in the pot of cold water, but the burner is turned on beneath you.

Bad news for your point: the frogs actually jump out in real life. You’ve also completely failed to demonstrate that we are frogs and there is a pot of water in this situation.

You are obviously oblivious to how mass-surveillance works, and how much it can destroy our freedoms.

I’m pretty sure they’re currently doing the mass surveillance thing just fine without DNA data. I’m not sure how DNA would even factor into mass surveillance. I’m open to considering realistic scenarios.  

Services like 23AndMe keep a database over all the DNA they have received.

Yes, it’s how they provide the service.

This database is often shared with governments, and can be used to create relationship maps - who is what to whom.

What’s your evidence for this claim?

This information can be and is being weaponized against us on a daily basis.

How? By who? What’s your evidence?

I’m betting you have no evidence and will simply appeal to some instance where some company sold some data to the government in a situation that isn’t at all analogous.

You are obviously oblivious to how mass-surveillance works, and how much it can destroy our freedoms

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Sell to insurance companies. Genetic predisposition towards certain illnesses? That’s a premium.

If that’s something that those companies were interested in doing, why wouldn’t they just require people applying for coverage to submit a DNA sample? That would be way easier, more reliable, and less shady compared to trying to piece together profiles based on data being sold on the black market.

The biggest worry is that the data might be right and might be used by an insurance provider to deny a person’s coverage

Ok, but if that’s something insurance companies want to do, they’re not going to be stopped because you didn’t send a DNA sample to 23andMe, nor are they going to have to go scrape up questionable data off the black market. They’ll simply offer people some discount for sending in a DNA sample or even make it a requirement for coverage.

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Sure, it’s a breach, but I would blame my idiot friend for re-using passwords. I wouldn’t blame the service for doing exactly what I expected the service to do, and is the reason I chose to use the service in the first place.

It’s also the reason I’ve very selective about what I share with anyone online, friend or otherwise.

A successful breach of a family member’s account due to their bad security shouldn’t result in the breach of my account. That’s the problem.

How the hell would they prevent that if you voluntarily shared a bunch of information with the breach account? This is like being mad that your buddy’s Facebook account got breached and someone downloaded shared posts from your profile, too. It’s how the fucking service works.

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Not then give you access to half their customers’ personal info?

That’s a feature of the service that you opt into when you’re setting up your account. You’re not required to share anything with anyone, but a lot of people choose too. I actually was able to connect with a half-sibling that I knew I had, but didn’t know how to contact, via that system.

by brute-forcing accounts with passwords that were known

That’s not what “brute force” means.

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Why anyone would care is beyond me. Explain what someone’s realistically going to do with your DNA data.

To be fair, he has had a surprising amount of success dealing with the GOP over the last few years.